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https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2024/sep/06/presidential-election-climate-crisis-project-2025-trump>
"Here is the biggest thing happening on our planet as we head into the autumn
of 2024: the Earth is continuing to heat dramatically. Scientists have said
that there’s a better than 90% chance that this year will top 2023 as the
warmest ever recorded. And paleoclimatologists were pretty sure last year was
the hottest in the last 125,000 years. The result is an almost-cliched run of
disasters: open Twitter/X anytime for pictures of floods pushing cars through
streets somewhere. It is starting to make life on this planet very difficult,
and in some places impossible. And it’s on target to get far, far worse.
Here’s the second-biggest thing happening on our planet right now: finally,
finally, renewable energy, mostly from the sun and wind, seems to be reaching
some sort of takeoff point. By some calculations, we’re now putting up a
nuclear plant’s worth of solar panels every day. In California, there are now
enough solar farms and wind turbines that day after day this spring and summer
they supplied more than 100% of the state’s electric needs for long stretches;
there are now enough batteries on the grid that they become the biggest source
of power after dark. In China it looks as if carbon emissions may have peaked –
they’re six years ahead of schedule on the effort to build out renewables.
And here’s the third biggest thing in the months ahead: the American
presidential election, which looks as if it is going down to the wire – and
which may have the power to determine how high the temperature goes and how
fast we turn to clean power."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
